Training the biomedical workforce - a discussion of postdoc inflation

Earlier this month, postdocs and graduate students
from several fields met to candidly discuss the challenges postdocs are
encountering while pursuing careers in academic research. The meeting began with an enumeration of
these challenges, discussing the different elements contributing to the
mounting obstacles preventing postdocs from attaining faculty positions – such
as the scarcity of faculty positions and ballooning number of rising postdocs,
funding mechanisms and cuts, the sub-optimal relationship between publications
and the quality of science, and the inaccurate conception of what exactly a
postdoctoral position should entail.

From [15]

At a fundamental level, there’s a surplus
of rising doctoral students whose progression outpaces the availability of
faculty positions at institutions capable of hosting the research they intended
to perform [10,15]. While 65%
of PhDs attain postdocs, only 15-20% of postdocs attain tenure-track faculty
positions [1]. This
translates to significant extensions of postdoctoral positions, with the
intentions of bolstering credentials and generating more publications to
increase their appeal to hiring institutions.
Despite this increased time, postdocs often do not benefit from continued
teaching experiences, and are also unable to attend classes to cultivate
professional development.

From [10]

Additionally, there may never be an adequate position
available. Instead of providing the training and mentorship necessary to
generate exceptional scientists, postdoctoral positions have become “holding
tanks” for many PhD holders unable to transition into permanent positions [5,11],
resulting in considerably lower compensation relative to alternative careers 5
years after attaining a PhD.

From [13]

Perhaps this wouldn’t be quite so problematic if the
compensation of the primary workhorse of basic biomedical research in the US
was better. In 2014, the US National
Academies called for an increase of the starting postdoc salary of $42,840 to $50,000
– as well as a 5-year limit on the length of postdocs [1]. While the salary increase would certainly
help, institutions like NYU, the University of California system, and UNC
Chapel Hill have explored term limits.
Unfortunately, a frequent outcome of term limits was the promotion of
postdocs to superficial positions that simply confer a new title, but are
effectively extended postdocs.

Given the time commitment required to attain a PhD, and the expanding
durations of postdocs, several of the meeting’s attendees identified a
particularly painful interference with their ability to start a family. Despite excelling in challenging academic
fields at top institutions, and dedicating professionally productive years to
their work, several postdocs stated that they don’t foresee the financial capacity
to start a family before fertility challenges render the effort prohibitively
difficult.

However, administrators of the NIH have suggested this
apparent disparity between the number of rising postdocs and available
positions is not a significant problem, despite having no apparent data to back
up their position. As Polka et al. wrote earlier this year, NIH administrators
don’t have data quantifying the total numbers of postdocs in the country at
their disposal – calling into question whether they are prepared to address
this fundamental problem [5].

A possible approach to mitigate this lack of opportunity
would be to integrate permanent “superdoc” positions for talented postdocs who
don’t have ambitions to start their own labs, but have technical skills needed
to advance basic research. The National
Cancer Institute (NCI) has proposed a grant program to cover salaries between
$75,000-$100,000 for between 50-60 of such positions [1,2], which
might be expanded to cover the salaries of more scientists. Additionally, a majority of the postdocs
attending the meeting voiced their desire for more comprehensive career
guidance. In particular, while they are
aware that PhD holders are viable candidates for jobs outside of academia – the
career trajectory out of academia remains opaque to them.

This situation stands in stark contrast to the misconception
that the US suffers from a shortage of STEM graduates. While the careers of postdocs stall due to a
scarcity of faculty positions, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science
and Technology announced a goal of one million STEM trainees in 2012 [3],
despite the fact that only 11% of students graduating with bachelor’s degrees
in science end up in fields related to science [4] due in part, perhaps,
to an inflated sense of job security.
While the numbers of grad students and postdocs have increased almost
two-fold, the proliferation of permanent research positions hasn’t been
commensurate [5]. So, while making science a priority is certainly prudent
– the point of tension is not necessarily a shortage of students engaging the
fields, but rather a paucity of research positions available to them once
they’ve attained graduate degrees.

Suggested Solutions

Ultimately, if the career prospects for academic researchers
in the US don't change, increasing numbers of PhD students will leave basic
science research in favor of alternatives that offer better compensation and
career trajectories – or leave the country for international opportunities. At the heart of the problem is a fundamental
imbalance between the funding available for basic academic research and the
growing community of scientists in the U.S [9,14], and a
dysfunctional career pipeline in biomedical research [9]. Some ideas of strategies to confront this
problem included the following suggestions.

Federal grant-awarding agencies need to collect accurate
data on the yearly numbers of postdoctoral positions available. This way, career counselors, potential
students, rising PhD students, and the institutions themselves will have a
better grasp of the apparent scarcity of academic research opportunities.

As the US National Academies have suggested, the postdoc
salary ought to be increased. One
possible strategy would be to increase the prevalence of “superdoc”-type
positions creating a viable career alternative for talented researchers who
wish to support a family but not secure the funding needed to open their own
labs. Additionally, if institutions at
which postdocs receive federal funding were to consider them employees with all
associated benefits, rather than trainees, rising scientists might better avoid
career stagnation and an inability to support families [11].

As the number of rising PhDs currently outpaces the
availability of permanent faculty positions, one strategy may be to limit the
number of PhD positions available at each institution to prevent continued escalation
of postdocs without viable faculty positions to which they might apply. One attendee noted that this could
immediately halt the growth of PhDs with bleak career prospects.

Several attendees brought up the problems many postdocs
encounter in particularly large labs, which tend to receive disproportionately high
grant funding. Postdocs in such labs
feel pressure to generate useful data to ensure they can compete with their peers,
while neglecting other elements of their professional development and personal
life. As well, the current system funnels funding to labs that can guarantee positive
results, favoring conservative rather than potentially paradigm-shifting
proposals – translating to reduced funding for new investigators [9].
Grant awarding agencies’ evaluations of grant proposals might integrate
considerations of the sizes of labs with the goal of fostering progress in
smaller labs. Additionally, efforts like Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s
bioRχiv might be more widely used to pre-register research projects so that
postdocs are aware of the efforts of their peers – enabling them to focus on
innovation when appropriate.

While increased funding for basic science research would
help to avoid the loss of talented scientists, and private sources may help to
compensate for fickle federal funds [6], some attendees of the
meeting suggested that the current mechanisms by which facilities and administrations
costs are funded might be restructured. These costs, also called “indirect
costs” - which cover expenditures associated with running research facilities,
and not specific projects - might be restructured to avoid over 50 cents of
every federally allocated dollar going to the institution itself, rather than
the researchers of the projects that grants fund [7,8]. This dynamic has been suggested to foster the
growth of institutions rather than investment in researchers, and optimizing this
component of research funding might reveal opportunities to better support the
careers of rising scientists [9,12].

Additionally, if the state of federal funding could be more
predictable, dramatic fluctuations of the numbers of faculty positions and
rising scientists might not result in such disparities [9]. For example, if appropriations legislation
consistently adhered to 5 year funding plans, dynamics in biomedical research
might avoid unexpected deficits of opportunities.

From [5]

Career counselors ought to provide accurate descriptions of
how competitive a search for permanent faculty positions can be to their
students, so they don’t enter a field with a misconceived sense of security. Quotes from a survey conducted by Polka et
al. reveal a substantial disparity between expectations and outcomes in
academic careers, and adequate guidance might help avoid such circumstances.

As shown in the NSF’s Indicators report from 2014, the most
rapidly growing reason postdocs identify as their rationale for beginning their
projects is “other employment not available” – suggesting that a PhD in fields
associated with biomedical sciences currently translates to limited
opportunities. Even successful scientists and talented postdocs have become
progressively more pessimistic about their career prospects. Accordingly - while there are several
possible solutions to this problem - if some remedial action isn’t taken,
biomedical research in the U.S. may stagnate and suffer in upcoming coming
years.

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